Artist Collectives: Shared Visions and Collaborative Practices

George September 22, 2023

Since the adoption of photography and greater engagements with new mediums such as video, performance and installation art, artists have explored a variety of ways to stretch the boundaries of their own work. Such experimental and multi-media practices have involved moving across disciplines, engaging with audiences in novel manners, and giving rise to new possibilities for artistic collaboration.

As we have already seen with the Bengal School and the Progressive Artists’ Group, artist groups and formal associations have been key to the history of modern and contemporary art in India. Especially in the 21st century, there has also been a marked rise in collectives of two or more artists who share certain goals and ideals, whether formal and aesthetic, or social and political, working together for a unified vision. A key difference between earlier artist groups and contemporary collectives is that historically, artists may have been associated with a group but still created work under their own names, while collectives give up individual names and identities to contribute to a shared goal.

Let’s look at two major collectives in India.

Raqs Media Collective

Founded in 1992, the Raqs Media Collective is composed of three independent media practitioners, Jeebesh Bagchi (b. 1965), Monica Narula (b. 1969) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (b. 1968), who began working together after graduating from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. The name of their collective is based on the Persian, Urdu and Arabic word raqs that refers to the state of consciousness that dervishes — members of certain Sufi fraternities — attain through their meditative whirling. As an acronym, Raqs stands for ‘Rarely Asked Questions’, resonating with the Collective’s provocative explorations through their work. Raqs works across mediums ranging from installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. Their practice also extends beyond producing art, as they work as curators, researchers and editors.

Two men and a woman surround a table with multiple booklets in a room full of drawings and books.

1. Raqs Media Collective views a series of Japanese fairy tales, 2010

An altered black and white photograph of a group of men working at desks wearing white garments and a few bottles shelved in the background highlighted with a blue tint.

2. An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale, 2011

Raqs Media Collective, Video projection of treated and archival photograph, 100.33 cm

Courtesy of the artist

Tubelights with their glass stem containing paragraphs of printed words on a green tiled background arranged in a grid-like manner.

3. Erosions by Whispers, 2005

Raqs Media Collective, Lightboxes, galvanized wire, printed broadsheet, 66 x 76 x 13 cm

Courtesy of the artist

White and yellow cutouts of running figures with printed words towards the edge hang in an exhibition space.

4. Things That Happen When Falling in Love, 2010

Raqs Media Collective, 18 coloured and clear acrylic figures with printed mirror letters, wire, cables and fixings, 1700 x 1500 cm

Courtesy of the artist

One of their seminal video installations, 5 Pieces of Evidence (2003), is a quasi-detective mystery work based on a 2001 scare that a ‘monkey man’ was roaming around a Delhi locality scratching the faces and haunting the dreams of people sleeping in that neighborhood. The work presents the city as a crime story with one aspect on each of its five screens, exploring different facets from ‘missing person’ notices to skyscrapers with the eyes of suspicious sleuths. The work reflects on urban development, migration and media attention, capturing Raqs’ ability to observe and comment on the mass hysteria of our times.

Five labelled screens are installed in a line on a plaster-chipped wall.

5. 5 Pieces of Evidence, 2003

Raqs Media Collective, Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature

Courtesy of the artist

An electric box with a mains switch on the left and a screen with a man’s face on the right labelled with the English text ‘The Missing Person’.

6. 5 Pieces of Evidence, 2003

Raqs Media Collective, Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature

Courtesy of the artist

Two wall screens with stills showing a man behind a grill and a grid with numbers, labelled with the English text, ‘Missing Person’ and ‘The Scene of the Crime’ respectively.

7. 5 Pieces of Evidence, 2003

Raqs Media Collective, Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature

Courtesy of the artist

A video still featuring superimposed images of a newspaper, a map of Delhi and a photograph.

8. 5 Pieces of Evidence, 2003

Raqs Media Collective, Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature

Courtesy of the artist

A seated man and a standing woman observe five labelled screens connected to pipes installed on a plaster-chipped wall with an electric box on the far left.

9. 5 Pieces of Evidence, 2003

Raqs Media Collective, Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature

Courtesy of the artist

A black background with the English text, ‘Monkeyman’s victims spurn expert report’.

10. 5 Pieces of Evidence, 2003

Raqs Media Collective, Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature

Courtesy of the artist

Other projects engage with history through archival materials, leaning on the collective’s work as researchers. For instance, The Surface of Each Day Is a Different Planet (2009) integrates historical photographs from the Galton Collection at the University College London and the Alkazi Collection of Photography to reflect on how ethnicity and race have been characterised. The work presents photographs of institutionalised individuals by 19th-century anthropologist Francis Galton, layering these with video footage of people moving from place to place. The work is intentionally open-ended, examining how collectivity and anonymity have been represented over time, and how identity is interwoven with attempts to reclaim agency in light of both colonial pasts and globalisation today.